Sony Ericsson to Acquire UIQ
Sony Ericsson is to purchase UIQ Technology from Symbian. UIQ Technology is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Symbian. UIQ Technology will continue to operate under its current management as a seperate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson. This reverses the purchase on the Ericsson Mobile Application lab by Symbian in 1999. More on this throughout the day. For now, the full press release follows.
Press Release
Sony Ericsson to acquire UIQ Technology AB
London, UK - November 7, 2006 - Sony Ericsson today announced it has reached agreement in principle for acquiring the Swedish software company UIQ Technology AB, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Symbian Ltd. UIQ Technology, which uses Symbian OS™, licenses the UIQ user interface and application development platform to mobile phone vendors worldwide.
Sony Ericsson is already a licensee of UIQ Technology, and has been working closely with the company on UIQ version 3.0, which is included in Sony Ericsson's P990 smartphone, M600 messaging phone and W950 Walkman® phone.
"UIQ offers excellent technical flexibility enabling us to provide compelling features such as push email, internet browsing, end user personalization, and enhanced music applications" explains Mats Lindoff, Chief Technology Officer at Sony Ericsson. "By acquiring UIQ Technology we will further invest and exploit the full potential of UIQ on Symbian OS for phone vendors, mobile operators, developers and consumers."
Following completion of the acquisition, UIQ Technology will operate as a separate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson under its current management team. UIQ on Symbian OS will continue to be openly available, licensed on equal terms to all its licensees.
"We welcome this decision by Sony Ericsson to purchase UIQ Technology as it will give us the additional investment needed to compete in the rapidly expanding software market for advanced phones," said Johan Sandberg, Chief Executive Officer, UIQ Technology.
"This announcement is a positive development as it will strengthen the capabilities and services available for phones based on UIQ and Symbian OS whilst allowing us to focus on the core product development of Symbian OS for the mass market. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Sony Ericsson and UIQ on future phone projects," said Nigel Clifford, Chief Executive Officer, Symbian.
Sony Ericsson expects the transaction to be completed over the next few months, pending regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.
Published by Rafe Blandford at 7:59 UTC, November 7th
Categories: Developer, Industry
Platforms: UIQ, General, UIQ 3
News Discussion
It's probably a good move though and shows SE's commitment to the UI.
What I don't understand is what exactly they've bought and why. Could this mean UIQ being used on top of other OSes for example?
Still, whatever happens it shows SE is definitely committed to UIQ.
It's nice to note that the press release states that UIQ will still be open to all licensees on an equal basis - that should keep Moto, BenQ etc. happy. (actually, are either of those two still making UIQ phones?)
[b]Edit:[/b] Just had another thought - what's going on here is that SE is doing a Nokia... Nokia own S60 (S80 & S90) and license them to other companies - SE buying UIQ puts them in the same position, and possibly more importantly, it puts Symbian back to being an OS company rather than partly OS partly GUI company. Certainly does show SE's commitment to UIQ though... I wouldn't be suprised if there's now a raft of anouncements of new SE UIQ phones.
[url]http://what.se/article.asp?id=4736[/url]
My rough sums imply that SE must be intending to sell at least 10-15 million UIQ handsets a year for this deal to make hard commercial sense. That certainly implies they're looking to use UIQ3 in their mainstream phones.
Wishful thinking on my part? I hope not.
They already recently used UIQ in one of their Walkman phones, that's arguably the most mainstream Symbian model released so far if you consider the brand it was under. I wouldn't be surprised if SE did start using UIQ more widely.
[/quote]
Symbian is (effectively) owned by Nokia. I can imagine the UIQ team might be having all sorts of problems obtaining funding for the development of UIQ. By purchasing the comapany, SE can ensure that whatever funding it sees fit is made available to develop the UI. You never know, they might even get within six months of a release date! :)
A lot of people say this, but is it really true?
Nokia only has a minority stake in Symbian, even if it is by far the largest shareholder. They tried to take a majority stake in Symbian when Psion sold their shares, but the other owners of Symbian prevented the sale taking place as it violated the terms of the agreement under which they all set up Symbian in the first place.
The Symbian licensees are currently: Arima (UIQ), Ben Q (UIQ), Fujitsu (FOMA), Lenovo (UIQ), LG Electronics (S60), Motorola (UIQ), Mitsubishi (FOMA), Nokia (S60 (S80 S90)), Panasonic (S60), Samsung (S60), Sharp (FOMA) and Sony Ericsson (UIQ).
That makes (unless I've got something wrong) 4 S60 licensees, 5 UIQ licensees and 3 FOMA licensees.
But if i wanted tomorrow to build a phone running UIQ, the aquisition of UIQ by SE means that i would need to buy a license from SE to do that. In other words, for each handset that i would sell, i would have to reverse part of my profit to my main competitor. Not that encouraging, is it?
And as long as the licensing terms don't change, there is little difference between paying a license fee to SE as compared to paying the same license fee to UIQ.
Besides, why would it be a problem that a limited number of manufacturers are using Symbian OS? If anything, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Linux are not exactly used by huge numbers of smartphone manufacturers, I would say.
If there's a smartphone OS having a problem, it would be Palm OS. It's sole licensee has started using Windows Mobile.
Sander van der Wal
[url]www.mBrainSoftware.com[/url]
I totally agree with Ewan's article earlier. There is something cool and settled in how Symbian is run today. The UIQ divesture proves it. There was no way Nokia could have blocked it even if they wanted. Instead, it makes sense therefore it was pursued. Full stop. The decision was not affected by shareholder politics.
One of the things that holds Symbian back is that its perceived to owned by Nokia even if that is not strictly the case. Also I can imagine some of the existing shareholders wanting to get rid of their Symbian holding because they are no longer actively pursuing the platform e.g. Siemens and Panasonic. Sales are increasing and the company is doing well. So it could be the right time to privatise the business and solve these issues.
However I can see Nokia being reluctant to allow the IPO of Symbian if it was still actively producing a UI that was in competition to S60. Future versions of the OS could be slanted to favour UIQ. Hence selling UIQ to SE could clear the path for privatisation?
That makes (unless I've got something wrong) 4 S60 licensees, 5 UIQ licensees and 3 FOMA licensees.[/quote]Lenovo is an S60 licensee, not UIQ: [url]http://www.s60.com/life/s60phones?pbId=244&dm_id=90[/url]
And not many new UIQ phones from Arima (was their device ever actually for sale?), BenQ or Motorola lately.
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